Classical philosophy and Darwinian biology are far more compatible than is usually assumed. In fact, looking at either from the standpoint of the other can enrich and deepen our appreciation of both. From a Darwinian point of view, the theories of Plato and Aristotle deserve to be taken very seriously. From the classical point of view, Darwinian biology is much less reductionist than its enemies suppose.

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Causation, Consciousness, & Free Will

One of my earliest memories is
standing next to my childhood home, in a gap between shrubs where a garden hose
was connected to the faucet. I was
staring at the reddish brick that covered three corners of our house and I
seemed to go into a trance. All I
remember is that the experience was very pleasant and I wanted it to go
on. It didn’t. My father came up behind me and barked out
some order. I was ripped out of the
state and I turned and stuck out my tongue at him. Those were the days when such a gesture
stirred the familial gods into action.

Dad grabbed me by the collar and
swatted me two good times on the butt. I
remember thinking that I could not explain to him what had happened. I also remember him saying “next time you
better stop and think!”

There is a lot to chew on in that
memory. Here, I will only focus on my
father’s understanding of responsibility. It lies in the ability to disengaged from the
chain of causation. One state of mind
leads naturally to an action. I am
enraged, so I swing the club. I am
responsible for the action because I am capable of stopping and thinking. I can step back from the momentum that
includes all the psychological forces and the context that is funneling them
toward the action and decide to act or not.

I have for a long time believed
that free will is rooted precisely in that ability and that consciousness is
precisely the power that allows us to exercise it. All the automatic processes that make up our
biological activity‑e.g., intracellular mechanics and the response of heart rate
to physical activity‑are flexible only within built-in parameters. Consciousness is something different. It can respond in creative ways to both
familiar and novel situations.

I am tempted to do something (eat
this, cuddle with her, etc.). How is it
that I decide not to do it? One
explanation is that contrary inclinations arise from my social conditioning,
which works on my evolved inclinations.
Just as a stool supports my butt because its four legs push towards its
center, so I keep to my diet and avoid adultery because the balance of forces
pushes in that direction. It is easy
enough to model consciousness as only a sophisticated system of
monitoring. My becoming aware of food is
analogous to my thermostat responding to a change in the room’s
temperature.

The problem with that explanation
is that, if it were true, there would be no need for appetites and
emotions. An autonomous biological
machine could balance inputs to produce outputs (actions) without any need for pain
and pleasure, fear and love. Such a
machine would, however, be much less flexible than one that was genuinely free. An organism that is free is unpredictable and
not limited to previous responses and strategies. It can do whatever the Hell it pleases.

A conscious animal might do
anything within the limits physical capabilities, including range of motion and
spectrum of perception. That freedom,
however, needs to be harnessed by the forces of natural selection. The animal exists because its ancestors
existed. It can do anything it wants but
it has to want to do what will promote the successful reproduction of its kind
if its kind is to be communicated across time.
Since it is conscious and therefore free to do or not do, it had to be
bribed with appetites and passions to do what promoted its successful
reproduction.

This is, in my view, the only
plausible explanation for genuine consciousness. All organisms, conscious or not, are
constantly trying to do something. The
vine climbing the wall is trying to reach the sunlit stones. The spider crawling across the table is up to
something. We cannot understand organic
activities without a dimension of value.
The plant will flourish and flower or wither. The spider will feed and mate, or not. Only conscious animals will have good and bad
days, satisfying or wretched lives.

The only alternative to this
explanation is epiphenomenalism.
According to this view, consciousness is only an accidental product of
neurological processes. All the
effective causation is going on below the level of consciousness. We become aware of our decisions only after
they have been made by our subconscious brains.
There are two reasons why I find this very implausible. One is that involves an effect with not
consequences. It would be very odd that this
amazing phenomenon, consciousness, is a result of causation but produces not
consequences of its own.

The bigger problem is that it
seems to recapitulate Cartesian dualism.
On the one side, you have all the effective mechanisms that operate in the
physical brain. On the other, the mind
that is fooled into thinking that it plays a causal role. Causation flows only one way, so there is no
interaction problem and I am not sure that this is logically incoherent. Still, it is very weird. It would be analogous to trying to explain
the movie industry while resolutely insisting that what shows up on the screen
has no part in the explanation.

We can be reasonably certain, I
submit, that the elements of our consciousness‑sensation, emotion, and
deliberation‑have a causal role in our behavior. Free will and moral responsibility are
emergent products of our mammalian evolutionary inheritance. I don’t think that this necessarily requires
a metaphysically robust doctrine of free will.
One might well wind all of this back into a deterministic physics. But then I regard deterministic physics as
conceit of the early moderns.

Free will is analogous to the
clutch on a standard transmission. It
allows us to disengaged and make a decision.
We can stop and think before we plow ahead.